"The waiting time for general purpose quantum computers is getting shorter, but they are still probably decades away," notes Security Week.

But "The arrival of cryptanalytically-relevant quantum computers that will herald the cryptopocalypse will be much sooner — possibly less than a decade." It is important to note that all PKI-encrypted data that has already been harvested by adversaries is already lost. We can do nothing about the past; we can only attempt to protect the future.... [T]his is not a threat for the future — the threat exists today. Adversaries are known to be stealing and storing encrypted data with the knowledge that within a few years they will be able to access the raw data. This is known as the 'harvest now, decrypt later' threat. Intellectual property and commercial plans — not to mention military secrets — will still be valuable to adversaries when the cryptopocalypse happens.

The one thing we can say with certainty is that it definitely won't happen in 2023 — probably. That probably comes from not knowing for certain what stage in the journey to quantum computing has been achieved by foreign nations or their intelligence agencies — and they're not likely to tell us. Nevertheless, it is assumed that nobody yet has a quantum computer powerful enough to run Shor's algorithm and crack PKI encryption in a meaningful timeframe. It is likely that such computers may become available as soon as three to five years. Most predictions suggest ten years.

Note that a specialized quantum computer designed specifically for Shor does not need to be as powerful as a general-purpose quantum computer — which is more likely to be 20 to 30 years away.... "Quantum computing is not, yet, to the point of rendering conventional encryption useless, at least that we know of, but it is heading that way," comments Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber. Skip Sanzeri, co-founder and COO at QuSecure, warns that the threat to current encryption is not limited to quantum decryption. "New approaches are being developed promising the same post-quantum cybersecurity threats as a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, only much sooner," he said. "It is also believed that quantum advancements don't have to directly decrypt today's encryption. If they weaken it by suggesting or probabilistically finding some better seeds for a classical algorithm (like the sieve) and make that more efficient, that can result in a successful attack. And it's no stretch to predict, speaking of predictions, that people are going to find ways to hack our encryption that we don't even know about yet."

Steve Weston, co-founder and CTO at Incrypteon, offers a possible illustration. "Where is the threat in 2023 and beyond?" he asks. "Is it the threat from quantum computers, or is the bigger threat from AI? An analysis of cryptoanalysis and code breaking over the last 40 years shows how AI is used now, and will be more so in the future."
The article warns that "the coming cryptopocalypse requires organizations to transition from known quantum-vulnerable encryption (such as current PKI standards) to something that is at least quantum safe if not quantum secure." (The chief revenue officer at Quintessence Labs tells the site that symmetric encryption like AES-256 "is theorized to be quantum safe, but one can speculate that key sizes will soon double.")

"The only quantum secure cryptography known is the one-time pad."

Thanks to Slashdot reader wiredmikey for sharing the article.

As global demand for Covid-19 vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world's poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs. From a report: Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times. Gavi, the international immunization organization that bought the shots on behalf of the global Covid vaccination program, Covax, has said little publicly about the costs of canceling the orders. But Gavi financial documents show the organization has been trying to stanch the financial damage. If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more.

Gavi is a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization that uses funds from donors including the U.S. government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide childhood immunizations to lower-income nations. Early in the pandemic, it was charged with buying Covid vaccinations for the developing world -- armed with one of the largest-ever mobilizations of humanitarian funding -- and began negotiations with the vaccine makers. Those negotiations went badly at the outset. The companies initially shut the organization out of the market, prioritizing high-income countries that were able to pay more to lock up the first doses. [...] The vaccine makers have brought in more than $13 billion from the shots that have been distributed through Covax. Under the contracts, the companies are not obligated to return the prepayments Gavi gave them to reserve vaccines that were ultimately canceled.

As nations around the world scramble to secure crucial semiconductor supply chains over fears about relations with China, the U.K. is falling behind. From a report: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the world's heavy reliance on Taiwan and China for the most advanced chips, which power everything from iPhones to advanced weapons. For the past two years, and amid mounting fears China could kick off a new global security crisis by invading Taiwan, Britain's government has been readying a plan to diversify supply chains for key components and boost domestic production. Yet according to people close to the strategy, the U.K.'s still-unseen plan -- which missed its publication deadline last fall -- has suffered from internal disconnect and government disarray, setting the country behind its global allies in a crucial race to become more self-reliant.

A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.'s efforts to develop its own coherent plan. The way the strategy has been developed so far "is a mistake," said a former senior Downing Street official. During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages -- soon compounded by China's tough "zero-COVID" policy. Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex -- a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts -- concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past. But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.

AmiMoJo writes: Wind and solar supplied more of the EU's electricity than any other power source for the first time ever in 2022, new analysis finds. They together provided a record one-fifth of the EU's electricity in 2022 -- a larger share than gas or nuclear, according to a report by the climate thinktank Ember. Record additions of new wind and solar in 2022 helped Europe survive a 'triple crisis' created by restrictions on Russian gas supplies, a dip in hydro caused by drought and unexpected nuclear outages, the analysis says.

Around 83% of the dip in hydro and nuclear power was met by wind and solar -- and falling electricity demand. The rest was met by coal, which grew at a slower pace than some had expected amid a drop in fossil fuel supplies from Russia. Solar generation across the EU rose by a record 24% in 2022, helping to avoid --10bn Euro in gas costs, according to the findings. Some 20 EU nations sourced a record share of their power from solar, including the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. Wind and solar growth is expected to continue this year, while hydro and nuclear generation is likely to recover. As a result, fossil fuel power generation could drop by an unprecedented 20% in 2023 -- double the previous record observed in 2020, the analysis projects.

India defended its use of fossil fuels citing energy security priorities, even as the country vowed to remain committed to decarbonization. Bloomberg News: The country, one of the world's largest producers of coal, has often countered demands to curb use of the dirtiest fossil fuel, arguing it is key to its energy security and economic development. The war in Ukraine saw energy rise to the fore of the agenda for developed nations, many of which revived use of coal after supplies of Russian oil and natural gas shrank.

"The behaviour of European nations in 2022, eminently understandable, demonstrates the return of energy security as a prime requirement for countries," according to India's Economic Survey, tabled in parliament Tuesday. "Therefore, it stands to reason that it would be no different for developing economies too." Developing economies are being asked to shoulder the burden of a global transition to green fuels, despite their lower contribution to accumulated emissions compared with developed nations that prospered on the back of "unrestricted use of fossil fuels," the Economic Survey said. The document, presented a day before the annual budget, is an account of the government's performance and ambitions for various sectors of the economy.

Frontier, an internet service provider (ISP) that services 25 US states, has just launched 5 Gig fiber internet service across its entire network. The Verge reports: Frontier launched 2 Gig fiber internet service less than a year ago, and the 5 Gig plan is currently available in all of Frontier's fiber-connected markets, with no phased rollouts. Compared to the cable-bound internet that most of us are familiar with, Frontier's 5 Gig internet is reported to have upload speeds that are up to 125 times faster and up to five times faster downloads, all delivered with less latency. The new 5 Gig network is one of the fastest internet options currently available in the US, with other fiber-enabled ISPs like Verizon Fios and Google Fiber still capped at around 2Gbps.

Right now, the only other 5 Gig network currently available in the US is through AT&T, which offers 2 Gig and 5 Gig plans. Google Fiber is also slated to add 5-gig and 8-gig plans to its lineup sometime this year, despite its numerous setbacks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Netherlands, once famed for being cycle-friendly, is facing a surprising threat: souped-up electric bikes speeding at up to 42kph (26mph). [...] Fietsersbond [is] a cyclists' union that is campaigning to crack down on speedy e-bikes and "fat bikes" -- those with extremely wide tyres. These should only use cycle paths with a maximum speed of 25kph -- but some of the bikes are designed to go faster or are being altered by the user to allow them to do so. Last June, Dutch MPs voted to ban people from boosting factory-programmed e-bike speeds, and cycling experts warn that nations rapidly adopting them, such as the UK, will soon face the same issues. Recent Dutch government research found e-bikes typically travel at almost 24kph, 3kph faster than normal bicycles, but a quarter of e-bikers exceed the limit – especially young adults. Mopeds and racers might be worse, but the Netherlands has an estimated 5m e-bikes, for a population of 17.8 million, and users include primary school children.

Esther van Garderen, director of the Fietsersbond, is campaigning for quick enforcement of the speed-boost ban and prohibiting fast e-bikes in bike lanes. "The problem is not normal e-bikes, but ever more souped-up bikes that are basically illegal mopeds," she said. "In the Netherlands, since January, moped users must wear a helmet and young people don't like this. They also need to be 16 and have a driving licence, but illegal 'fat' bikes are just sold, youngsters under 16 use them on the roads going at 40kph, without a helmet. This isn't allowed, but there is no enforcement." She added that a plan by Amsterdam-Zuid district council to research whether child cyclists should be obliged to attach a flag to their bikes to improve road safety made her blood boil: "To think that the solution is that children need to have a flag is blaming the victim to the max."

This autumn, Amsterdam will reduce speed limits from 50 to 30kph on 500 roads and the city is also researching "intelligent speed adaptation" systems to warn speeding cyclists or even force e-bikes to slow down. "Traffic safety and safe biking are areas where I really want to break ground in the coming years," said Melanie van der Horst, deputy mayor for traffic. "Two-thirds of Amsterdammers tell us they don't feel safe in the traffic. So more than 80% of roads will become a 30kph zone and we are researching a speed limit on the bike lanes. The growth of electric vehicles means there are huge speed differences on bike lanes and studies show that this creates risks." [...] The international cycling advocacy foundation BYCS believes that slightly slower cities might be better ones. "Technology is praised as progress, but it's not about progress," said Maud de Vries, the chief executive. "It's about urban health and a system where people are more active, healthy and cross each other's paths, in a good way."

Big global banks are eying some of the world's most fragile countries for a new experiment in financial engineering: debt relief in exchange for environmental protections. From a report: Called "debt-for-nature swaps," they present a tempting solution for the rising number of nations in distress, particularly those with ecosystems to protect. A country gets to avoid default and lower its debt burden, as long as it's willing to earmark some of the savings to salvage a coral reef, preserve a forest or build a wind farm, for example. Global investors get better returns and enhanced green credentials. Wall Street takes a cut.

As much as $2 trillion of developing country debt may be eligible for this kind of restructuring, according to a rough estimate by the Nature Conservancy, a US nonprofit that's taking a lead role in these deals. Belize inked a $364 million nature swap in 2021; Gabon signaled plans for a $700 million restructuring in October; Ecuador is said to be working on a $800 million transaction, and Sri Lanka is considering a $1 billion deal. Buoyed by the finance industry's newfound enthusiasm for biodiversity, backers of this latest flavor of swap are finding eager partners in investment banks and institutional investors.

These are "turbocharged swaps," said Daniel Munevar, economic affairs officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and former adviser to finance ministries in Greece and Colombia. "The limit in these operations isn't the money to fund the swaps, it's how much debt can be swapped." Behind the feel-good headlines, it's unclear whether these kinds of swaps will deliver the promised benefits. The terms can be murky. Transaction costs are high. Experts question whether the complex and costly deals will achieve long-term financial stability. In December, as negotiators gathered at the United Nations' COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal, Greenpeace and dozens of other non-profits called for debt-nature swaps to be rejected.

Fossil fuel companies should be forced to "take back" the carbon dioxide emitted from their products, handing them direct responsibility for cleaning up the climate, a group of scientists has argued. From a report: The principle that the producer of pollution should pay for its clean-up is established around the world, but has never been applied to the climate crisis. Yet technology to capture and store carbon dioxide underground is advancing, and is now technically feasible, according to Myles Allen, a professor of geosystems science at the University of Oxford.

"The technology exists -- what has always been lacking is effective policy," he said. "The failure has been policy, not technology -- we know how to do this." The companies that profit from extracting fossil fuels -- oil, gas and coal producers around the world -- should be paying for an equivalent quantity of carbon dioxide to be stored geologically as a condition of being allowed to operate, he argued.

Allen is a co-author, along with four other scientists from Oxford, the US and the Netherlands, of a paper published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters that sets out how such an "extended producer responsibility" could work. Under a "carbon takeback obligation," all fossil fuels extracted or imported into a nation or group of nations would be offset by storing underground an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that generated by that fuel. Phased in over time, it could be used to store 100% of emissions by 2050, to help the world reach net zero.

The protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere could be restored within several decades, scientists said Monday, as recent rogue emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals from China have been largely eliminated. From a report: In a United Nations-sponsored assessment, the scientists said that global emissions of CFC-11, a banned chemical that has been used as a refrigerant and in insulating foams, had declined since 2018 after increasing for several years. CFC-11 and similar chemicals, collectively called chlorofluorocarbons, destroy ozone, which blocks ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and otherwise harm people and other living things. The scientists said that if current policies remained in place, ozone levels between the polar regions should reach pre-1980 levels by 2040. Ozone holes, or regions of greater depletion that appear regularly near the South Pole and, less frequently, near the North Pole, should also recover, by 2045 in the Arctic and about 2066 in Antarctica.

"Things continue to trend in the right direction," said Stephen A. Montzka, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one of the report's authors. Dr. Montzka led a 2018 study that alerted the world that CFC-11 emissions had been increasing since 2012 and that they appeared to come from East Asia. Investigations by The New York Times and others strongly suggested that small factories in Eastern China disregarding the global ban were the source. The new emissions had threatened to undermine the Montreal Protocol, the treaty negotiated in the 1980s to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons in favor of more benign chemicals after it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons were depleting atmospheric ozone.

AmiMoJo writes: Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has signed a new law that legalizes piracy of movies, music, TV shows and software owned by rightsholders from 'unfriendly countries'. The law also allows goods protected by intellectual property law to be imported from any country without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

Lukashenko's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to new sanctions being imposed by the EU, U.S. and other countries. In common with Russia, Belarus relies on intellectual property owned by foreign rightsholders that are currently unable or unwilling to supply and/or license it. So, to ensure legal access to pirated movies, music, TV shows and software, the government drafted a new law to restrict intellectual property rights.

India has taken a step toward allowing leading foreign universities such as Yale, Oxford and Stanford to set up campuses and award degrees as part of an overhaul of the South Asian nation's higher education. From a report: Regulator the University Grants Commission on Thursday unveiled a draft legislation for public feedback that seeks to facilitate entry and operation of overseas institutions in the country for the first time. The local campus can decide on admission criteria for domestic and foreign students, fee structure and scholarship, according to the draft. The institutions will have the autonomy to recruit faculty and staff.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is pushing to overhaul the country's heavily-regulated education sector to enable Indian students to obtain foreign qualifications at an affordable cost and make India an attractive global study destination. The move will also help overseas institutions to tap the nation's young population. Even as India's universities and colleges have produced chief executive officers at companies from Microsoft to Alphabet, many fare poorly in global rankings. The country needs to boost its education sector to become more competitive and close the growing gap between college curricula and market demand. It's currently ranked 101 among 133 nations in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index of 2022 that measures a nation's ability to grow, attract and retain talent.

"Imagine starting your work day with a fresh coconut juice perched by your laptop as you gaze over the ocean or a tropical rainforest...." writes the Conversation.

"More than 40 nations or territories now offer "digital nomad" visas to attract those able to be employed in one country while living, and spending their income, in another." Fancy the beach? A bunch of exotic islands are on the list. Prefer tropical forests? Try Brazil or Costa Rica. Looking for history? There's Spain or Greece. Love Wim Hof-style ice-bathing? Iceland beckons.

Think of a "digital nomad" visa as a cross between a tourist and temporary migrant visa — a working-on-holiday visa. Instead of the visa giving you the right to work in the country, it's allowing you to stay so long as you're gainfully employed and bringing money into the local economy. How long you can stay varies, from 90 days in Aruba in the Caribbean to up to two years in the Cayman Islands. Most are for 12 months, with an option to renew. Some places, such as Latvia, restrict visas to employers registered in an OECD country. But generally the key requirement is that you can show you have no need to find local work and can meet minimum income requirements.

Generally, the visa conditions simplify taxation issues: you continue to pay your income tax in the country of your employer. But this varies. For example, in Greece (which offers a two-year renewable visa) you are exempt from paying local income tax only for the first six months.

A key driver of the digital nomad trend is the ability to maintain a career while ticking off other personal goals, particularly travel and the ability to experience a different way of life. Moving somewhere with a cheaper cost of living could be another motivation.
The article warns that "Living a long way away from family and friends and support networks is likely to be more challenging, no matter how idyllic your location.

"If you like predictable structure and routine, the uncertainty and inevitable inconveniences that arise may mean it isn't for you."

If humankind detects a message from an advanced civilisation, "It would be a transformative event for humankind," writes the Guardian, "one the world's nations are surely prepared for.

"Or are they?" "Look at the mess we made when Covid hit. We'd be like headless chickens," says Dr John Elliott, a computational linguist at the University of St Andrews. "We cannot afford to be ill-prepared, scientifically, socially, and politically rudderless, for an event that could happen at any time and which we cannot afford to mismanage."

This frank assessment of Earth's unreadiness for contact with life elsewhere underpins the creation of the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) post-detection hub at St Andrews. Over the next month or two, Elliott aims to bring together a core team of international researchers and affiliates. They will take on the job of getting ready: to analyse mysterious signals, or even artefacts, and work out every aspect of how we should respond.... "After the initial announcement, we'd be looking at societal impact, information dissemination, the media, the impact on religions and belief systems, the potential for disinformation, what analytical capabilities we'll need, and much more: having strategies in place, being transparent with everything we've discovered — what we know and what we do not know," says Elliott....

Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist and professor of science communication at the University of Westminster, said the new hub at St Andrews is "an important step in raising awareness at how ill-prepared we currently are" for detecting a signal from an alien civilisation. But he added that any intelligent aliens were likely to be hundreds if not thousands of light years away, meaning communication time would be on the scale of many centuries. "Even if we were to receive a signal tomorrow, we would have plenty of breathing space to assemble an international team of diverse experts to attempt to decipher the meaning of the message, and carefully consider how the Earth should respond, and even if we should.

"The bigger concern is to establish some form of international agreement to prevent capable individuals or private corporations from responding independently — before a consensus has formed on whether it is safe to respond at all, and what we would want to say as one planet," he said.

The proposal has angered many of Japan's neighbors, particularly those with the most direct experience of unexpected exposure to dangerous levels of radiation. From a report: Every day at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, officials flush over a hundred tons of water through its corroded reactors to keep them cool after the calamitous meltdown of 2011. Then the highly radioactive water is pumped into hundreds of white and blue storage tanks that form a mazelike array around the plant. For the last decade, that's where the water has stayed. But with more than 1.3 million tons in the tanks, Japan is running out of room. So next year in spring, it plans to begin releasing the water into the Pacific after treatment for most radioactive particles, as has been done elsewhere. The Japanese government, saying there is no feasible alternative, has pledged to carry out the release with close attention to safety standards. The plan has been endorsed by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog.

But the approach is increasingly alarming Japan's neighbors. Those in the South Pacific, who have suffered for decades from the fallout of a U.S. nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, are particularly skeptical of the promises of safety. Last month, a group representing more than a dozen countries in the Pacific, including Australia and the Marshall Islands, urged Tokyo to defer the wastewater releases. Now, Japan is poised to forge ahead even as it risks alienating a region it has tried in recent years to cultivate. Nuclear testing in the Pacific "was shrouded in this veil of lies," said Bedi Racule, an antinuclear activist from the Marshall Islands. "The trust is really not there."

King Dollar is facing a revolt. Tired of a too-strong and newly weaponized greenback, some of the world's biggest economies are exploring ways to circumvent the US currency. From a report: Smaller nations, including at least a dozen in Asia, are also experimenting with de-dollarization. And corporates around the world are selling an unprecedented portion of their debt in local currencies, wary of further dollar strength. No one is saying the greenback will be dethroned anytime soon from its reign as the principal medium of exchange. Calls for "peak dollar" have many times proven premature. But not too long ago it was almost unthinkable for countries to explore payment mechanisms that bypassed the US currency or the SWIFT network that underpins the global financial system.

Now, the sheer strength of the dollar, its use under President Joe Biden to enforce sanctions on Russia this year and new technological innovations are together encouraging nations to start chipping away at its hegemony. "This will simply intensify the efforts in Russia and China to try to manage their part of the world economy without the dollar," said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England in a Bloomberg podcast. Writing in a newsletter last week, John Mauldin, an investment strategist and president of Millennium Wave Advisors with more than three decades of markets experience said the Biden administration made an error in weaponizing the US dollar and the global payment system. "That will force non-US investors and nations to diversify their holdings outside of the traditional safe haven of the US," said Mauldin.

India said on Thursday that under its ongoing G20 presidency, it will prioritize the development of a framework for global regulation of unbacked crypto assets, stablecoins and decentralized finance and will explore the "possibility of [their] prohibition" in a potentially large setback for the nascent industry. From a report: India began its year-long presidency of the Group 20 early this month. The group, which comprises 19 nations across continents and the EU, represents 85% of the world's GDP. It also invites non-member countries including Singapore and Spain and international organizations such as World Bank and the IMF.

The Reserve Bank of India, the Indian central bank, said in a report today that crypto assets are highly volatile and exhibit high correlations with equities in ways that dispute the industry's narrative and claims around the virtual digital assets being an alternative source of value due to their supposed inflation-hedging benefits. The Indian central bank warned that policymakers across the globe are concerned that the crypto sector may become more interconnected with mainstream finance and "divert financing away from traditional finance with broader effect on the real economy."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command is a US/Canada organization protecting the air sovereignty of the two nations.

But every year on December 24th, they also tell you where Santa is. From NORADSanta.org: The modern tradition of tracking Santa began in 1955 when a young child accidentally dialed the unlisted phone number of the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center upon seeing an newspaper advertisement telling kids to call Santa. The Director of Operations, Colonel Harry Shoup, answered the phone and instructed his staff to check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole.... Each year since, NORAD has dutifully reported Santa's location on Dec. 24 to millions of children and families across the globe. NORAD receives calls from around the world on Dec. 24 asking for Santa's location. Children, families and fans also keep track of Santa's location on the NORAD Tracks Santa® website and our social media platforms.
The page lists the NORAD technologies involved in tracking Santa — including 47 radar installations and geo-synchronous satellites with infrared heat sensors. ("Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch...")

And this year NORAD also produced a special video highlighting the various military fleets protecting Santa. ("He may know when you're sleeping, he may know when you're awake... " it tells viewers. "But for 67 years now, when he takes flight, we'll know.")

More from NORADSanta.org: Canadian NORAD fighter pilots, flying the CF-18, take off out of Newfoundland and welcome Santa to North America. Then at numerous locations in Canada other CF-18 fighter pilots escort Santa. While in the United States, American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15s, F16s or F-22s get the thrill of flying with Santa and the famous Reindeer...

Q: How can Santa travel the world within 24 hours?

A: NORAD intelligence reports indicate that Santa does not experience time the way we do. His trip seems to take 24 hours to us, but to Santa it might last days, weeks or even months. Santa would not want to rush the important job of delivering presents to children and spreading joy to everyone, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa somehow functions within his own time-space continuum....

How does Santa get down chimneys?

Although NORAD has different hypotheses and theories as to how Santa actually gets down the chimneys, we don't have definitive information to explain the magical phenomenon.

Do your planes ever intercept Santa?

Over the past 65 years, our fighter jets (F-16s, F-15s, F-22s and CF-18s) have intercepted Santa many, many times. When the jets intercept Santa, they tip their wings to say, "Hello Santa! NORAD is tracking you again this year!" Santa always waves. He loves to see the pilots...!

How many people support this effort, and are they active duty military personnel?

More than 1,250 Canadian and American uniformed personnel and DOD civilians volunteer their time on December 24th to answer the thousands of phone calls and emails that flood in from around the world. In addition to the support provided by our corporate contributors to make this program possible, NORAD has two lead project officers who manage the program.

How much money is spent on this project?

The NORAD Tracks Santa program is made possible by volunteers and through the generous support of corporate licensees who bear virtually all of the costs.
Corporate contributors include Microsoft (with separate contributions from Microsoft's search engine Bing and from Microsoft Azure), AWS (and Amazon's Alexa), Verizon, and HP.

NORADSanta.org also boasts extra features like an "arcade" of online games, a jukebox of Christmas tunes, and a library of online books about Santa. And the site even provides some technical data on the weight of Santa's sleigh — although the unit of measurement used is gumdrops.

Longtime Slashdot reader WindBourne writes: EU is creating a tariff on certain imported goods based on their CO2 emissions that went into production and transportation. While many have opposed this, others have been correctly pointing out that little would change until nations started charging other nations for their polluting the world. In some ways, this already has a number of attributes going for it. With Kyoto, Europe forced that emissions from bio would count at the point where it was harvested and not where it was burned/utilized. This was because Europe is a major importer of bio products for heating and electricity. With this tariff, it will apply any use of bio, including H2, at point of usage, not of production.

What remains to be seen is:
1) How they will apply it to size (Nation? State? City?)?
2) What data will be used (Information from the local government? Satellite?)?
3) How the data will be normalized (GDP? Per capita?)?
4) How to calculate emissions per good (Total emissions? Worst item? Certain parts?)?

This will no doubt cause a number of nations to scream about it, as well as smaller nations, but hopefully, more nations will join in as well. Looks like the world is finally going to get serious about stopping greenhouse gas emissions. "The measure will apply first to iron and steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity production and hydrogen before being extended to other goods," notes CNN. "Under the new mechanism, companies will need to buy certificates to cover emissions generated by the production of goods imported into the European Union based on calculations linked to the EU's own carbon price."

Details of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism can be found here.

Close to 200 countries reached a watershed agreement early Monday to stem the loss of nature worldwide, pledging to protect nearly a third of Earth's land and oceans as a refuge for the planet's remaining wild plants and animals by the end of the decade. From a report: A room of bleary-eyed delegates erupted in applause in the wee hours after agreeing to the landmark framework at the U.N. biodiversity summit, called COP15. The hope is to turn the tide on an ongoing extinction crisis. About a million species are at risk of disappearing forever, a mass extinction event scientists say is on par with the devastation wrought by the asteroid that wiped out most dinosaurs.

Today's loss of biodiversity is being driven not by a space rock but by one species: humans. The loss of habitat, exploitation of species, climate change, pollution and destruction from invasive species moved by people between continents are all driving a decline in the variety of plants and animals. Nations now have the next eight years to hit their targets for protecting life. With few legal mechanisms for enforcement, they will have to trust each other to protect habitats and funnel hundreds of billions of dollars over conservation. Alternative, non-paywalled sources: The Guardian and Associated Press.